


if it takes me all night

by offbrandgizmo



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: AU in which Peter doesn't save Liz's dad, Anxiety, But ultimately this is about him slowly becoming okay, Depression, Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Iron Dad, Look it's bad at first, M/M, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, SO, Self-Harm, The rest is canon compliant, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Trans Male Character, Trans Peter Parker, probably
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-02-27 07:30:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13243449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/offbrandgizmo/pseuds/offbrandgizmo
Summary: He knows what’s about to happen but he’s a superhero, so he should be able to stop it, right? Right?Or: An AU in which Peter fails to save Liz's dad, and he's broken for it.





	1. pitched through the windshield

**Author's Note:**

> There'll be more notes concerning what this story actually is at the end.
> 
> For now, content warnings for graphic violence, panic attacks, dysphoria (nothing too descriptive yet, but I did trigger myself a tiny bit writing this, so be careful) and one reference to deliberate self harm.  
> Be safe and be careful.
> 
> Titles are from Hurt Less by Julien Baker. I recommend.

He remembers watching the fireworks with Ned when they were younger, how the way they’d reflect off of his best friend’s sweaty face reminded him of stained glass, and how the coloured fragments, even though they were all mangled, were proof of everything that was right in the world.

But Ned’s not there to build a mosaic from the reflective sparks that bounce around the jagged metal of Liz’s dad’s wings, and there is absolutely nothing right with anything when his brain starts to work again and he knows, he _knows_ what’s about to happen but he’s a superhero, so he should be able to stop it, right? Right?

He calls to the man, calls even though his lungs are hurting like they’ve got jagged glass in them, and there’s one shard in his mosaic brain that glints that his ribs might be broken, but the rest are painted red and blue, alarm bells like cop cars that demand his wellbeing stays put behind the caution tape.

‘Your wingsuit… Your wingsuit’s going to explode!’

It’s like his words have a delay on them, like his own personal response time, and it’s about 2 minutes late. They go unheard, and he’s not even sure he said them, and everything hurts, everything hurts so fucking much when he raises a hand and shoots webs at the box as Liz’s dad tries to leave. He doesn’t know how he stands, or how he grabs the web and pulls, and he registers that he’s crying out but all he can hear are the failing engines of the wings and all he can hear is that he _has to stop this_.

‘Time to go home, Pete,’ and it snaps him back in, when the man, suddenly void of identity, speaks, and he doesn’t remember who this is, except that he absolutely does, and that this is Liz’s dad and he has to save Liz’s dad. And he’s fully conscious when he screams back, disgust permeating his lungs involuntarily when his voice cracks.

‘I’m trying to save you!’

He’s thrown back with all the weight of pulling when the web is cut, and there are already tears in his eyes by the time he hits the ground, and he yelps, and he tries again, once, and twice, but of course he’s out of web, and he feels half of himself give up as he recoils and Liz’s dad goes down.

The sound of the explosion makes the part of him that people call ‘ _hero_ ’ look up to see the flames, and the child in him whimpers, ‘No,’ and the rest of him growls, ‘No!’ And then he’s running straight through the flames, shielding his face until he sees the pile of scorched metal on the other side. There’s a moment of hesitation he doesn’t understand but immediately hates himself for. He dives for it.

He feels the gloves split beneath his hands, feels the cotton curl away when he touches the metal, feels the heat so hot it goes cold as blisters form, and he jerks back and shakes them as if it’ll shake off the pain like the sand clinging to his shitty replacement suit. He grabs the metal anyway, because _what else was he going to do_ , and he feels hot liquid run through his fingertips when the blisters pop, but he lifts and lifts and lifts and throws the broken wing aside, revealing Liz’s dad underneath.

He hoists the man over his shoulders and carries him back through the fire, dropping him onto the sand where it’s safer. He drops to his knees beside him, reaching for his wrist and pulling back the fabric of his clothing to find the pulse. The pulse he _knows_ he’ll find.

The pulse he doesn’t find.

He’s there for a long time after that. Or, it feels like it. In reality it’s minutes stretched into days. On day one, he tries to find a pulse in his neck instead, day two he tries hovering his hand over paling lips to feel breath on his fingers, day three, CPR, day four, he screams at his friend’s father until he suffocates on the tears, and day five, he gets up and collects the boxes, piling them beside the man he couldn’t save, and he leaves.

 

He finds a building high enough to be above it all, and he climbs up the side and crashes onto the roof, everything inside of him cracking as well, and he panics, and he can’t breathe, so he rips off the hoodie of his makeshift suit, trying to pull his binder up and off, too, but he can’t, he can’t, he can’t, so he grabs a shard of glass from a broken beer bottle within crawling distance and he cuts into it at the front, ripping it when there’s enough of a tear and throwing it off of himself. He writhes on the cold concrete of the roof, sobbing without sound and trying to inhale. He coughs and can’t get enough breath for it to be the big kind of cough he needs to get his lungs back, so he keeps coughing until he feels winded, and he stops flat on his chest, his cheek pushed against the cool surface.

As he calms, a new disgust trickles in when he feels his chest pressing against the ground, and he pushes up and throws himself at the discarded hoodie, pulling it on and bracing himself on the half-wall barrier between the roof and the open air. He stands almost diagonally and positions his chin on the top of the concrete barrier so that the pain from the friction is distracting enough and so that he can’t see the protrusions coming out of his chest when he looks down. He can only see the lit up New York streets.

It makes him delirious, and after an amount of time he doesn’t register in the slightest, he slips and lands on his back, hard, the side of his face bashing into the concrete as he lets his body go limp. It’s like all of a sudden he’s tired, and that’s all he can be, just _tired_ , as if he worked for it, as if he did anything to deserve being _just tired_. The world goes dark even though he’s fairly sure his eyes are still open, until it doesn’t because there’s light penetrating his eyelids—so they _were_ closed—and it’s light like fire, and no, no, no, he doesn’t want to see fire right now, no, someone needs to stop it, please don’t make him do it, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t, he can—

‘Shit, kid, can you hear me?’

He stops trying to breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to stress that this story will aim to be cathartic in a controlled environment, at the very least for me. I'm on the recovering end of a lot of this, but I still haven't written it very much, so I want to focus on recovery. But I'm not sure if anyone would be interested in this, like, whatsoever. There's a chance that I'll still write it, for myself, but I'm posting now so that I know to bump the priority up if anybody is interested, since this makes the fourth writing project I have at the moment. If you do happen to read this, I have a couple questions:
> 
> 1\. Would you be interested in some Ned/Peter? I haven't delved into it yet so I'm not sure I ship it, but I did automatically go to allude to it in the first fucking sentence of this fic, so I mean.  
> 2\. Would you be interested in Trans Tony or Has To Learn About Trans Stuff Tony?  
> 3\. Anything else you'd particularly wanna see?
> 
> Thanks, and happy reading! <3


	2. you taught me the courage of stars before you left

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No content warnings except vague allusions to dysphoria, quite vague however, and just, kinda... sadness.
> 
> Title from Saturn by Sleeping at Last. Because that song will never not destroy me.

‘Come on, kid, it’s time to get up… C’mon, Pete.’

He feels a large hand shake his shoulder, and he recoils, expecting to feel the pain of the night before, but he only feels sort of… warm.

‘Peter, you’re going to be late. Get up, I’ll drive you.’

His eyes snap open and he sees himself, first. He stares at his reflection—his perfectly healthy reflection—in a set of glasses that he’s sure he left in his bedside draw. He’s sure they were cracked, too.

He blinks a few times to focus, screws up his nose. He sees uncracked glasses with thin, brown rims and perfectly straight, white teeth. He sees cool, blue eyes that are staring _at him_.

‘Uncle Ben?’

His voice cracks in several places and he sees the wide eyes of his reflection redden and threaten to spill over. He barely registers that he should be vaguely disgusted.

‘Hey, hey, hey, what’s the matter?’

Tears start to fall and he latches his arms around Uncle Ben’s waist. Was everything just a really long dream? He wouldn’t mind. He really wouldn’t mind. He’d trade it all for Uncle Ben to be okay. He would. He would.

‘What’s up, Pete? You have a nightmare?’

He keeps his face buried in his uncle’s chest and whines, his voice breaking completely and he nods instead of speaking. He feels Uncle Ben’s hand rest atop his head, all big and enveloping and warm and _safe_. He doesn’t know how long they sit there, Uncle Ben rubbing his thumb back and forth like a pendulum, but it’s all quiet and soundless, so they don’t have to count the seconds and that makes it all okay.

After a time, he lifts his head, to see his uncle’s face, to check that he’s really still there, that it’s really still him. And it is. All blue-eyed worry and storm-at-sea concern.

He’s never wanted to see someone scared for him so much.

‘Where’s Aunt May?’

He wants them all together, their little family in their little apartment. He wants Aunt May to ruffle his hair, and Uncle Ben’s hair; wants to see her pull his uncle’s glasses off and kiss his nose before putting them back, gently and with so much love. He wants to hear her tell Uncle Ben to be safe on his way to work again. He wants to come home from school after being called _Penis Parker, Penis Parker, Penis Parker_ and have Uncle Ben take him, gently and with so much love, into the bathroom to shave together again, even if it was always half-comfort, half-dysphoria because he never actually had any facial hair to shave. He wants Aunt May to interrupt them, waving her hand through the air and proclaiming that she burnt the food, and that they’re ordering pizza instead.

He wants it all.

‘She’s not here, Peter. It’s just us.’

He stills, then sighs, and the exhale takes all the warmth from the room along with it. He wraps his arms around himself and hunches over, wanting to be back in the real world again. Wanting to stay. Wanting to go. Wanting to dream.

Uncle Ben sits, softly, on the end of the bed, not looking at him. He stares at the open door.

‘How is she?’

‘She misses you.’

‘And you?’

‘I killed someone.’

He looks at him, then.

‘No, Peter, you didn’t.’

‘You don’t know that.’

The bed shifts and Uncle Ben’s hand comes to his face. He rubs his thumb along the corner of the bags under his eye. He leans into it. It makes him feel sleepy.

‘Peter, you can’t save everyone. And you’re not at fault for that.’

He doesn’t look at him. Can’t look for the blue that he once used to guide him to clearer skies so, so often. He’s afraid he’ll overshoot and end up somewhere too good to be true. But knows he’s already there.

‘Stop saying that.’

It’s one of those moments where you hear your voice through your eyes, and you can picture the furrow of your eyebrows because of how _teenager_ you sound. He knows he’s pouting without really meaning to.

‘Saying what, Pete?’

He shuts his eyes, and everything goes black even though he’s pretty sure he doesn’t even have eyelids in this dream.

‘That. _Peter._ ’

He hears Uncle Ben smile, and the hand on his face moves away.

‘It’s your name.’ And after a moment, ‘No one can take it from you, Peter. Not even this.’

He feels two fingertips on his forehead, and he opens his eyes and crosses them trying to look at the fingers pointing to his brain. After a moment, Uncle Ben moves his hand up and brushes his hair back instead, gently and with so much love.

‘I’m so proud of you, Peter.’

He shuts his eyes again, trying to fight the tears, but _he’s pretty sure he doesn’t have eyelids in this dream_ , so they come anyway.

‘I’m _not_ ,’ he sobs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a strange, odd chapter. It sort of came out of nowhere. But if I'm hunting for catharsis, I sure found it here. Never been a fan of dream sequences. Yet here I am.
> 
> So, we'll probably go with some Ned/Peter exploration at some point, and I think the consensus is Has To Learn About Trans Stuff Tony, so the only question I have left is if there's anything you particularly want to see in this story. Anything at all. Maybe it'll end up here, too.
> 
> Thank you so much, and happy reading. <3


	3. it's down to me and you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: repeated allusions of intent to self harm and one instance of actual self harm, panic, mentioned but not explicit dysphoria
> 
> Title from Dust & Gold by Arrows to Athens.

For the first week after Uncle Ben died, he couldn’t sleep, because every time he did, he would wake up, and he’d have forgotten. He’d lie in bed and wait for Uncle Ben to come in, rousing him for school. And then, after a little while, maybe a few minutes, maybe longer, he’d realise that he wasn’t coming. And he’d be pushed by freight trains back into reality again. It felt like some kind of sleep disorder, as if he was still dreaming even when he woke up.

Waking up after this, though, he almost wishes he could have a moment to process, to forget, just for a while. He’d take the freight trains head on.

Instead, he wakes up with a weight pressing down on his chest, heart heavy and eyelids heavier. He lies there for a while, not opening his eyes. Maybe he could slip back into the dream with Uncle Ben for just a little bit longer.

The walls are pale when his eyelids do lift, like involuntary curtains, letting the light in even though he wants to stay in the dark. The far wall is entirely tinted white glass with a door in the right corner. He sees Tony leaning against the glass in the corner opposite the door, arms folded and head down, eyes closed. He’s never known anybody to sleep standing up, but if he did, Tony Stark wouldn’t be all that surprising of an option.

He looks to his right and finds Aunt May, slouched over in a chair. He feels his heart grow heavier when he sees the dry tear tracks down her cheeks. He looks down to find his hand in hers, and he feels tiny needles jabbing the back of his eyes. He blinks them away.

He’s not hooked up to a machine, and he guesses that his enhanced healing probably did most of the work while he was asleep, then. His hands are wrapped in bandages, though, and he can see the pale red stains through the white. He winces as phantom burns score his fingertips.

‘Does it hurt?’

His head snaps up and he locks eyes with Tony. There’s warmth in them that he wishes he could douse himself in, like gasoline, and like Tony’s voice could be a lighter, and he’d set himself on fire to feel whole again.

He shakes his head, eyes not moving from Tony’s. He doesn’t want to look away. It’s anchoring him.

‘Peter?’

It takes so much strength just to look at Aunt May when she speaks, broken enough for the both of them, and even more to reciprocate her hug when she throws her arms around him.

But he feels like Peter again, too. Maybe that means it’s okay. That _has_ to mean it’s okay.

The room folds into silence when she pulls away, and he stares at a spot on the wall behind her, just below her shoulder, as it all gets smaller, wrapping around him until he shivers from the cold breeze of the walls closing in.

Nobody’s speaking. Nobody’s speaking. Someone needs to say something. Someone needs to move, or breathe. Someone needs to do something. Someone needs to break it. Someone needs to open a window or a door or a whole wall—

Eventually, he does it himself.

‘I had a dream about Uncle Ben,’ he says, vacant.

From the corner of his eye, he sees the blurred shape of Aunt May, sees the puddle of her face collapse for a moment into ripples before she reaches up and touches the triangle of wrinkles on the inside of her eye, pushing herself back together.

‘You can’t do this anymore, Peter.’ Her voice is firm, and he knows she just deflected, and he feels a spike of anger, but he thinks that maybe he deflected, too, just now, so he lets it slip away.

‘I…’ He can’t think of anything to say because he can’t fight for it right now, but if he doesn’t right now, then how can he ever? How will she ever believe him if he tells her that he needs this, that he needs it so much? So much. He needs this. He doesn’t know what ‘ _this_ ’ is; if it’s Spider-Man, or the Avengers, or Tony, or… Or everything else. But he knows he needs it.

‘Happy’ll drive you, when you’re ready.’ Tony Stark breaks the second layer of cold lingering around Peter, but Aunt May builds it back up when she glares at him, and it says _you’re the man who endangered my son_ , and Peter feels it sink into him, and right through him and into Mr. Stark, and he can’t even begin to imagine how Mr. Stark feels, but Peter feels guilty, so, so guilty, because—

‘This wasn’t Mr. Stark’s fault!’ He doesn’t know where it comes from, but he has to get it out from wherever in his brain the feeling is lodged. The guilt, the panic, the _something_.

Aunt May’s looking at him now, and it says _don’t say another word_ , and he knows she’s about to say something to that effect out loud, so he says it for her.

‘It, yeah, yes, I’m Spider-Man, Aunt May. I’m Spider-Man, but I was Spider-Man _before_ Mr. Stark, and I would still be Spider-Man without him, but without him I wouldn’t—’ He stops, like there’s a lock suddenly clamping his top and bottom teeth together, painfully like someone drilled holes in them for the metal, and he can’t figure out the right numbers to get it off. He can’t figure out the right thing to say.

He wouldn’t _what_? What is it? What is it? What is it, what is it, what is it, what _is it_ —

‘We’re leaving,’ Aunt May says, and she says it like it’s final, like it’s so final that he’ll never come back, and then she stands up and that’s when he realises that he doesn’t actually _know_ where he is, but that if they leave like this, he’ll never be an Avenger, he’ll never see Tony again, he’ll never—

He’ll never _what_?!

He doesn’t know how his hands end up tangling in his hair, but he feels himself pulling at his scalp, trying to stuff his brain back in, because some of it’s gone somehow and he can’t do this without it, he can’t—

A hand touches his arm. Gently, like he’s porcelain. Gently, and with so much—

‘C’mon kid, you’ve gotta go.’

He looks up into brown eyes and sees so much there that he gets the feeling he’s far too young to understand. But he wants to anyway. But he knows he can’t. But he has to try.

‘Mr. Stark, I—’

_I’m sorry? I’m so sorry? I was just trying to help? I didn’t mean to kill—_

Maybe he did forget. Because at that moment the whole world collapses when he pictures a face, a familiar face, and he tastes mould in his throat and feels sand in his lungs and he starts coughing, and things start crumpling around him and all the windows shatter and the bed folds in on top of him and the covers wrap around his neck and the bedside tables start burning and Tony and Aunt May turn to dust and the lightbulb flickers and cracks and sends hot shards of glass onto his hands and they burn holes right through his nails and he stops being alive.

Except, somehow, none of that happens. Instead, somehow, he’s standing up, now, and he’s in his clothes and his shoes and he’s not quite him because there’s too much weight on his chest and not enough solid in his walk, but he’s walking out the glass door when Aunt May holds it open for him, and then he’s leaving Tony Stark behind. He’s leaving Tony Stark behind.

Aunt May takes his hand and he looks at her and asks her how much time has passed, except he doesn’t because his voice won’t work and instead he tries to plead with her not to take him away from all of this with just his eyes, and he knows how he must look to her, how pitiful, how weak, how small, but his eyebrows are pulled together hard enough that they’re hurting.

When he used to do that, after looking in the mirror for too long, Uncle Ben would press his thumb in between Peter’s eyebrows and push gently until Peter relaxed his face. And then he’d tell him that he was every bit as much a man as he is, as he was. But Aunt May doesn’t do that. Because Aunt May can’t do that.

Tony could. Tony could do that. Tony could—

Tony couldn’t do that.

He wants life to be real again but he feels like he’s being dragged along with the current, and he can’t pull away or get close enough to the shore to grab a stick and hold on until he’s ready to keep going, until he’s caught his breath. He can’t get his feet to grab hold of the rocks he sees in the reflective water below, because every time he looks down to try and grab a foothold, he sees his face and he recoils instead.

Eventually he lets go. He looks down at Aunt May’s hand in his and he stares at it for so long that it becomes larger and larger until it’s all that he can see and all that he can feel. He wants to believe, chooses to believe that he stared long and hard enough that he didn’t see Happy’s guilt-ridden eyes or stick-pressed lips.

They get back to the apartment and he almost expects Uncle Ben to be there, somehow, like he’ll run into his arms and everything will be okay, but he realises as they cross the threshold of the door just how messed up his head is, and he wants to smack it into the wall, but instead the tops of his feet start hurting with every step as if all his toes are going to snap and Aunt May’s turned around and let go of his hand to close the door and she doesn’t get the chance to catch him before he falls like Peter desperately wanted her to.

‘Mom,’ he whispers from the floor, wrapping his arms around himself and trying to keep everything together even as his emotional guts are spilling out all over the floor. Even as his eyes are sobbing for him because his voice can’t.

Aunt May looks down at him for a moment that he’s sure is barely a second, but his brains stretches it out long enough for him to see that she’s wondering if he means her, or if he misses his parents.

‘Mm…’ He tries to say it again, to tell her what it means, but she’s already enveloping him, and he hears her whispering lies like, ‘Oh, Peter,’ and, ‘It’s okay,’ and, ‘It’s not your fault,’ and he wonders if she even knows what he did, because she wouldn’t be saying that if she did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise for the quality of this chapter. It was a scene I wasn't sure how to write but I wanted to get it done. Tony is hard to keep in character. Let me know how I did and please give me tips if you have any. For someone who's writing this precisely /because/ I'm far enough into recovery that I have the beauty that is hindsight, I sure cracked these last two days. Trying to swing back. Using this to help (hopefully).
> 
> Sidenote, writing 'Mom' was so fucking weird I considered just not including that. I'm Australian. It's weird.
> 
> For anyone who ever wants to talk, whether about this, or Marvel things, or trans things, or life things, my Tumblr is offbrandgizmo. I'd love to chat <3  
> Thanks, and happy reading <3


	4. 'til i collapse or i burst, whichever comes first

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ned is Peter's safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: sadness, allusion to self harm in an indirect way (barely there), very vague mentions of dysphoria, panic and emotional breakdowns
> 
> Title is from Shadowboxing by Julien Baker.

Peter goes to school the next day. And by the end, he’s thinking, _I shouldn’t have come, I shouldn’t have come, why didn’t I just stay home._

 

He’s pretty sure he doesn’t say much to Aunt May when he leaves in the morning. He vaguely recalls her offering that he stay home for a day, but he knows he turned her down. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be here.

Here, where he crosses the threshold between _I could still turn back_ and _where’s Ned, I need his safety_ when he steps through the front doors. And as if the outside world is filtered, numbed to the workings of a high school, all the noise of teenagers catches up with him when he sets foot inside.

He feels like every single set of eyes is on him as he walks to his locker, feels like everyone sees when he fumbles with his lock when he can’t seem to remember the code he’s been using for nearly two years. His hands start to sweat and he hears his breathing quicken even though he can’t feel it happening, and he realises that he doesn’t even know if his body can tell when he’s breathing anymore, which has to be a really bad thing, like, a really, _really_ bad, life-threatening thing, and he’s panicking and he wants out—

‘Hey!’

He lets out all the breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding when he hears that voice, and he turns and sags with his back against the locker beside his.

‘Ned,’ he exhales.

‘You never got back to me!’ Ned exclaims, too loud, and Peter doesn’t have the heart to shush him. ‘I was worried, man!’

Peter feels a part of him crack a little at that. He never wanted anybody to worry about him. He _never_ wants Ned to worry about him.

‘Sorry,’ he puffs out, and Ned’s safety net eyes catch him and keep him from sliding down the lockers completely as they flicker with worry.

‘Hey, are you okay, dude?’ He asks, putting a hand on Peter’s arm.

Peter tries not to jump and tries just as hard to ignore the sparkly feeling it causes when Ned’s hand connects with his arm, even with the fabric of his shirt between them. He shakes his head, hard. He’s not going to lie to his best friend, especially when he can obviously see right through him. _Right_ through him. It makes Peter’s head spin, worse than it already was.

‘I forgot my code,’ he rasps out, glancing at his locker and then straight back to Ned’s _safe_.

Ned frowns. ‘7-12-17,’ he rattles off as he turns and unlocks it for him. He looks back at Peter and sees a crumbling mess. Peter looks like the one time he tried to scramble eggs but just ended up with an omelette that looked like the desert after an earthquake. It didn’t taste good, even when he covered it in syrup and strawberries.

Peter forces his eyes wider when Ned speaks again. ‘Are you sure you should be here? You don’t look so good.’

Peter nods again, pushing into Ned to coax him out of the way so that Peter can grab his English books from his locker. He knows Ned’s still watching him and he wants to feel safe but doesn’t want to meet his eyes again. Doesn’t want to see the worry. Doesn’t know if it’s supposed to make him feel unsafe even though he’s so, so sure it never will.

‘I’m fine,’ he says, but it sounds gasp-y, so he turns to face Ned, staying still for a moment before glancing up and looking into his eyes, taking a deep breath. ‘I’m fine,’ he says, better and more certain this time.

That’s it, Peter, he thinks. You’re better than this. You made it through growing up all wrong, through losing your parents, and through losing Uncle Ben. You can do this. Just… Don’t think about it.

 _What?_ Something else replies. _Don’t think about the fact that you killed—_

I didn’t kill _anyone_ , he thinks. I didn’t. _I didn’t._ I just couldn’t save him. There’s… There’s a difference.

‘If you say so,’ Ned’s reply cuts through the internal debate, and Peter wonders if Ned took a moment to answer or if his thoughts really are running fast enough to carry entire scary, invasive conversations in between his real ones.

It makes him feel crazy.

And then he and Ned are in English together, and he’s actually sort of able to tune into the lesson, though his attention wanders every so often and Ned taps his back from the seat behind him to pull him back in. Peter really doesn’t know how it is that Ned is able to tell whenever he floats away into his head just by looking at his back. He hopes it’s because he’s just that attentive towards him. Because he knows him just that well.

Hopes. But he knows he’s wrong.

 _Tap-tap_.

There he goes tuning out again, apparently. He rests his chin in his hand and leans his elbow on the desk, sinking into it and focusing on the teacher again.

 

‘We’re doing something this weekend,’ Ned declares when they’re at lunch, his voice drowning out the sound of body odour and attitude that wafts over them from around the distinctly _teenage_ room. Why did he and Ned ever stop eating in the library?

‘Dude,’ Ned shoves his arm softly with his own. ‘What happened, Peter?’

He’s doing that Ned thing he does. Ever since Ned found out Peter was trans, he uses his name a lot and finds excuses to use male pronouns around him to bring him up a little if he’s down. It took Peter a while to notice it, but he started to realise his mood had a suspicious habit of lifting whenever he was around Ned. Maybe that’s why he wants him whenever he feels sad.

Peter can’t stop looking around the room, focusing on each table, seeing smiles and moving mouths and hearing a garbled mess of words he can’t focus on. It’s too much. It’s way too much.

‘Can we eat somewhere else,’ he says, not asking. He gets up and walks out of the cafeteria.

He doesn’t know if he’s ever regretted a decision so much.

Because there, at the end of the hall, carrying a cardboard box away from her locker, is Liz Allan.

For a moment, Peter’s hanging from the edge of a building fifty stories up, and he’s barely holding on, trying to sink his nails into the concrete as tiny, slippery words pluck his fingers off one by one.

_Useless. Hero. Sad. Girl. Liar._

_Killer._

That word is larger than the others, and the letters are wide enough and bold enough that he lets go before they even hit, not wanting to feel the sound of it tearing him from the inside out.

And then Liz looks at him.

_And then Liz looks at him._

He should go to her, and speak to her, and apologise for running out on her. He should ask her how she is, even though the question is tactless, and she’ll tell him she’s not doing good and he’d say _that makes two of us_ , and he’d apologise for ruining her life. Because that’s what he did. Peter Parker ruined Liz Allan’s life.

He needs to apologise for that.

But then he starts to cry.

He feels his lips splinter first, feels it with so much pain that he thinks they might actually be cracking and for a second he thinks he feels blood pouring down his chin. Then it reaches his cheeks and curls, parallel, into his eyes. His entire face fragments and caves in on itself, except it doesn’t.

It stays in one piece and the splinters and the fragments fall out of his eyes, instead.

He hears the voice of his childish self, a voice that should be long, long gone by now, ringing through his head, all wrong and scared and lost.

_Help me._

Ned hears him, and his arms are underneath Peter’s to scoop him up before he falls, except they’re not, because Peter doesn’t actually fall, and instead, Ned’s just staring at him, looking from him to Liz and back again until he finally does save him, taking his hand and leading him into the bathroom on the other side of the hall like a lifeline.

When the door shuts behind them, Peter braces himself over the sink and his shoulders weigh down on him like bricks—or like sparking metal wings, a voice says—forcing his back to curl inwards as he hunches over, two quiet hiccups stretching from his throat and pushing out between his lips.

‘Pete—’

Peter cuts Ned off, not wanting that warm, attempted comfort again because he knows he doesn’t deserve it.

‘I killed Liz’s dad,’ he whispers. He means to say it louder, but it gets trapped all the way down in his stomach, the syllables that didn’t fully make it wrestling around in there and making him feel like he’ll throw up, like they’ll get out one way or another. Maybe they’ll make it into his bloodstream and then he’ll start bleeding from all of his pores, only his blood will be letters instead, _k_ , and _i_ , and _l,_ and—

He looks up, stares at himself in the mirror. He watches as his eyes go glassier and seem somehow more fragile, more shattered than before. He doesn’t deserve it. He sees tears fall from them, just two, one from each eye, and he thinks for a second that maybe he’s _making_ himself cry, that he doesn’t really need to, that this isn’t really happening here, in the bathroom at school, because that hasn’t happened since he was just starting middle school.

He’s not breaking down in this bathroom. _You are not breaking down in this bathroom._

‘I couldn’t,’ he stares himself in the eyes as he chokes through gritted teeth. ‘… Save him.’

‘You didn’t kill him,’ Ned says, but his eyes are wide like he’s not really sure. Because, the Avengers, they… They kill people. And Peter’s… Peter’s pretty much an Avenger, right? What if…

‘His wings… They were going to explode.’ Peter’s still staring himself down in the mirror and Ned sees helplessness meet anger in his eyes, and then fear’s there, too, and Peter’s drowning in it. ‘I tried to tell him,’ he says. ‘I tried to stop him, but…’

Ned relaxes and he steps forward, putting his hand firm on Peter’s shoulder. He always expects them to be broader than they are, because of how strong Peter always seems, but now, it’s almost like he’s got his hand right on Peter’s nerves, the way the smaller boy jumps and folds in on himself, wrapping both his arms as far around his torso as they’ll go as he sinks into a crouch.

He makes this noise, then, that wrenches something deep in Ned’s chest, ripping it right out of place and he doesn’t need to try to speak to know he’s just lost his voice. He watches Peter for a second, following the aftermath of that strangled sound, the sound that had to have been the audible evidence of Peter’s heart just… breaking.

He doesn’t know what to do. He feels useless, and scared, and responsible, because he _does not know what to do_ , but he’s Peter’s best damn friend, and he should have some idea, he should know some way to help him!

Finally, he sinks to his knees and pulls Peter into him, and he knows it’s rough and probably hurts him, just a little, but he thinks, when Peter exhales, that maybe the hurt helped to remind him that he’s not alone in a tiny room anymore. Because he’s pretty sure _that_ feeling is what had Peter almost curled into a ball on the dirty bathroom floor, and he wants to take the feelings that are hurting Peter, wants to lay him down and play Operation, using _slow_ and _careful_ to pull the monsters out of Peter’s head. To make him better again.

Peter sobs again, and it brings him back, and he closes his eyes because he knows that if he sees any more of Peter’s body shaking, he’ll cry, too, and then what good will he be, really?

He wants to fix Peter, wants to fix him more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life. But for now, he has to settle. So, he does. He settles for letting Peter sink into his chest on an angle so awkward it’ll definitely hurt Peter's muscles later on, and he settles for feeling the shaking under his hands when he guides them to Peter’s back, pressing them flat to envelop as much of this broken boy as he can. He settles for being a rock, a resting place, a pit stop in Peter’s eventual _being okay again_. Because he’ll get there. Ned knows it. He _knows it_ so well he has to force his fingers not to clench around the shirt underneath them, has to force them to stay flat, to stay gentle, like Peter needs right now.

He exhales hot air into Peter’s hair, slowly, softly. Gently and with so much love.

He can’t speak, so he thinks instead, hoping Peter will hear that, somehow.

_It’s okay, Peter. It’s okay._

_You’re okay._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, let me know if there are specifics you want to see!
> 
> I recently read some cute Matt Murdock & Peter Parker fics, and I've been getting into Daredevil again. Would anybody be interested in seeing a little of that? I'm not sure, yet. This story is entirely touch-and-go. Let me know!
> 
> Happy reading. If you ever wanna chat, I'm offbrandgizmo on Tumblr.  
> Thank you <3


	5. it's a lie though

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They fix each other's hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: sadness... and i think that's it. let me know if there's more.
> 
> Title is from The Village by Wrabel.

In reality, it takes them three weeks to actually do anything. Ned makes all the effort he can possibly make; it’s three weeks of meeting May’s apologetic smiles at the door to their apartment, nearer to grimaces, with promises that he’ll come back the next day. He refuses to take every hint he’s given by Peter’s avoidant texts and ever-growing distance at school.

Ever since he fell apart in the bathroom—well. He’d put himself back together quickly and poorly, like how bandages with cartoon characters on them were more to stifle their tears when they were kids than to actually keep anything in place. The adhesive was always too little to help. Ned doesn’t know what kind of adhesive Peter needs now, or where on Earth he’s supposed to find it. He doesn’t even know where to begin.

Though, he supposes, Earth isn’t their only option anymore. Maybe he can coax Peter into working out the logistics of a space adventure with him. For kicks.

Though, _actual space travel_ with Peter seems about on par in terms of difficulty with just getting Peter out of his bed on the weekends at the moment.

He tries to keep that in mind, Ned does. _At the moment_. That this will pass, and things will be okay again, and these will all feel like memories rather than moments. Moments don’t last. He knows this, but it can only soothe the sweat keeping his hands clammy and causing everything to slip out of his grip so much. For the most part it’s overwhelming.

And it’s all made worse by the knowing. Knowing that this can’t be anything compared to what Peter must be going through.

He _has_ to help him. He has to.

Peter doesn’t have to let him in any further than his room. Just enough for Ned to wipe his clammy hands on his clothes and reach for his friend. Just enough for Ned to _try_.

Hell, at one point he even circles around to the alley and looks up at the fire escape leading to Peter’s bedroom window. He thinks of climbing up to force his way in and drag Peter out, but he dismisses that idea fairly quickly after just resting his foot on the first rung of the ladder causes it to tremor violently.

He tries to deny that it’s a metaphor for the shaky ground he’s walking on as he distantly hopes that Peter never uses it to get into his bedroom after being Spider-Man. Because he worries for Peter’s safety.

(As if he wasn’t already doing that, always, just a little.)

This whole thing with Peter’s failing to save someone—which, Ned would point out if the subject wasn’t still sore, and if he could manage to get Peter on his own for more than the two seconds it takes them to part ways after school, was in no way his fault. He doesn’t need to know the details to know that much.

But anyway. The first objective is just getting Peter out of bed. He can do that. He’s unpleasantly pushy if he’s nothing else.

(He considers throwing stones at the window to get Peter’s attention, but that’s feels just a little _too_ obvious. Just a little _too_ Nicholas Sparks for either of their tastes.)

Because sure, he’s been seeing Peter at school, but he can’t help but feel like he’s not really _seeing_ him. His best friend’s all autopilot hand gestures and uneven, one-line responses. Whenever he breaks that steady it’s to slip-up show the unravelling that must be going on in his head and Ned _hates_ it. God, he hates it.

Because he loves Peter. He loves his best friend, so much, so often. So always.

And he wants nothing else if not to get him back.

 

He’s mostly just lethargic now. Which, hey, if he can count anything as a win, it’s gotta be that, right?

The first week was hell. He stopped going to school after the day he chanced and massively failed, and spent the better part of a week curled up in blankets with his laptop tilted on its side as he lay watching videos mind-numbing enough that he can readily admit, now, to having very little recollection of any of them.

He went back to school the following Monday, and he’d been feeling sort of fuzzy ever since. Some light research provided him with the likely answer—dissociation. But it hasn’t been quite what he’s read up on based on other people’s experiences. He considers, at one point, that maybe his dysphoria plays into the way he sees—or rather, _doesn’t_ see—himself, but his brain is so hazy that he’s reduced to squinting and trying to rid his eyes of the cloud vignetting the edges of his vision before he can chase the thought to any meaningful conclusion.

Because that’s what everything is right now. It’s all wispy, like the pale smoke drifting upwards from a quickly melting candle. He tries to reach for it, to grasp the intangible, but he only ends up with wax burning his palms—

_(He feels the gloves split beneath his hands, feels the cotton curl away when he touches the metal, feels the heat so hot it—)_

For one, he certainly doesn’t feel like he’s seeing himself from above. It’s a little like watching something play out in front him. But his hands don’t feel like his own—just foreign, unfamiliar objects at the ends of his arms, which are really just foreign, unfamiliar objects coming out of a foreign, unfamiliar body.

He’s foreign. Unfamiliar. Indistinct. ~~_Disgusting_~~ _._

His fingernails feel like they could fall off at any moment, like they’re detached and waiting for the slightest tug to come apart. Like he might even just unravel with them.

He spends a lot of time focusing on his hands to make sure he doesn’t catch the nails on anything, lest he tear them right from his fingertips. He feels like that’d be painful, but he hardly knows what pain is anymore, so he can’t help but weigh up the odds sometimes.

He thinks that maybe if he focuses hard enough on doing nothing but coasting along at school and then, when he’s at home with no distractions that he’s eager towards, curling up in bed to pass the time, he’ll come out of it alive. Maybe.

He wishes everything wasn’t maybes. That the zeroes and the ones of his universe hadn’t up and replaced themselves with _maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe_. That it wasn’t all so damn up in the air and uncertain.

God, he wishes something could be certain.

He wants someone to tell him the difference between _alive_ and _living_ again, because his distant brain clues him into the fact that it’s something he forgot, but he can’t dig deep enough to find context without it clouding his vision with red and sparks and _I have to save him_ ’s.

The first time he looked in a mirror after realising that he didn’t really feel _real_ , he threw up nothing and then curled up with May on the couch and cried into her lap—though he’s not sure it really counts as crying when all of the tears felt dry and didn’t actually _fall_. They just collected and soaked in around his eyelids and made him feel like he was upside down.

He doesn’t deserve to cry, he thinks—he knows. It’s fate robbing him of the energy to do it so that he doesn’t cave into the mess he really wants to be. At least this way he can stay moderately less bothersome to the people around him. To the ones who care. Because he knows— _thinks, maybe_ —that they do.

_Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe._

 

Ned almost fist-pumps when he finally makes it in. When Aunt May passes him on the stairs the next Saturday, four weeks since it all happened.

A month, he thinks, and tries not to think anymore.

She’s on her way to work, and he’s on his way to what feels like work, as well. She stares at him for a moment longer than usual before she fishes through her bag and presses a key into the palm of Ned’s left hand— _still clammy, hopefully soon_ —and tells him it’s Peter’s spare.

She hovers, for a moment too long, and looks like she’s going to say something but doesn’t quite get the words through her brain-filter. Ned fills the silence with the only words he thinks he understands right then and there.

‘He’s my friend,’ and he doesn’t mean it to sound as desperate as he thinks it does.

(May hears Ned, then, as she stares at him and tries to find the words, and when he speaks, she can’t hear anything but heavy resolution and resolve. She knows in that moment that she’s done the right thing by her son.)

 

Peter’s curled up in bed when he walks in, and when he sees him, Ned feels like he’s messed up on account of bringing nothing to excuse the fact that he’s there. It could have been anything; homework, a new Lego project, food—

Then he reminds himself that even though he’ll deny it to a dying breath, Peter Parker _needs_ him. His best friend _is_ his excuse.

He stands in the doorway for a moment, regarding the way that Peter’s on his side with his laptop tipped to accommodate the view. After they stare at each other a second too long for it to be comfortable, Ned steps into the room and plants himself on the floor right beside the bed, so his face is close enough that Peter could reach out and touch. If he wanted to.

_But what does he do now, what does he sa—_

‘Hi,’ but Peter does it for him.

And in that second, hearing what almost sounds like something closer to real than the mirage of a friend he’s had beside him for the last four weeks, Ned can’t be anything but _severely proud_. Because how could he ever doubt that Peter would become okay?

Peter’s the strongest person he knows.

Hands down.

He can’t stifle it, then, the incessant _need_ for physical touch. The need to cover up and protect and smother his favourite person all at once.

He pushes the laptop until it’s flat on the bed and snapped shut, rolling up onto his knees and setting his arms around his best friend’s angled shoulders. He doesn’t want reciprocation, because he’s doing it for himself.

Peter’s arms don’t move. He barely moves at all aside from the slight rise and fall of his chest. And Ned knows he needs to say something to make the moment real, so he says the first string of words that push their way past his lips, unhindered by his teeth. Even he knows the sound breaks free smooth, and his hands start to mend themselves, too, to smoothen out and dry up.

He can latch on again.

He can never let him go again.

 

‘Whatever you’re probably thinking right now is probably a lie,’ he says.

And Peter _breaks_. The floodgates open, and he gasps, because even though every loose and tumbling stone that’s rolled into the dam of his stomach in the last _however-long_ has sent another crack splitting into the wall keeping everything back, this might be the first clean break.

And _he needed a clean break, he needed it so bad, and Ned’s given it to him and Ned’s the best and Ned’s everything and Ned’s the only good stone, the only good rock and it’s Ned, Ned, Ned, Ned, Ned, it’s Ned, it’s Ned, it’s Ned, it’s—_

‘ _Ned_ ,’ he gasps, and he grabs, and he bunches as much of Ned’s shirt into his fists as he can because his _fingers aren’t going to fall apart anymore_ , because Ned’s here and Ned’s the glue he forgot he needed and, ‘ _Ned_.’

‘Peter Parker, I am never letting go, I swear,’ Ned’s shaking his head into Peter’s shoulder and it makes him realise that he’s shaking, too, from head to toe.

He groans, and it’s the first sound that leaves him that actually feels like his own.

‘ _God_ ,’ he rasps as he claws his way deeper into Ned’s shirt, taking what feels like his first and last breath, except it isn’t, because he keeps breathing anyway.

But with the _real_ comes the _guilt_ and the _nerves_ and the _wrong_ and the _scary_ , and he has to say something, he has to apolog—

‘I’m—’

‘No.’

‘Sorr—’

And then Ned’s pulled back, and the link is all but broken, except it really isn’t, because now Ned’s hand is clasped over his mouth, and he’s never seen his friend so solid before, so set. So certain.

_Certain, certain, certain._

_Not maybe._

_Not maybe._

‘Sorry is a banned word,’ Ned tells him. ‘I’ll make a sorry jar, I swear.’

And he looks so serious, so, so serious that the laughs spill from Peter before he even realises, and they’re so hard his stomach hurts and he starts to cry but Ned’s here and that does nothing but make _everything_ okay. Because Ned does better than the very best of bandages.

Ned’s the adhesive to all of Peter’s lacerations and he finally feels like he can stop bleeding out in a dark corner all alone, just waiting for the louder silence.

Because Ned’s nothing like stitches. Not as painful, not as _wire_.

And Peter’s never going to have to pull him out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for the wait! But also not, because it meant that I didn't force a terrible chapter.
> 
> I actually kind of love this one. It got soft at the end and the scene came so naturally, _finally_.
> 
> Part of the inspiration to really push finishing this chapter came from getting a Tumblr message about a person's love for this story, so as always, comments are the lifeblood and I am always down for conversation on Tumblr (@offbrandgizmo).
> 
> Thanks for reading! What do you want to see next?  
>  ~~I kind of wanna get Ned hurt for the angst but I think it's too soon.~~


End file.
